This Great Contest Afloat (with Neil Chatelain)

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:01]Welcome to the Emerging Civil War podcast. I'm Chris Macowski and joining me today is my good friend and fellow co-conspirator Neil Chadelane. How are you doing, pal?

[00:00:11]>> I'm doing pretty good, Chris. How are you?

[00:00:13]>> I'm doing well, thanks. And uh bringing you on the show again because it's always fun to chat with you. But you've got a new book. So, I really wanted us to have a chance to chat about the book, this great contest to float. And um for folks who aren't familiar with this book or haven't heard about it yet, it's an overview of the Navy, Neil, just how challenging was it to put an overview of the Civil War Navy into an emerging Civil War style book?

[00:00:40]>> Yeah, so like you hit the nail on the head on that one. Like we've had many conversations about this. Um you know, emerging Civil War series books, they're really small, right? Like I mean there a couple hundred pages but like 40,000 45,000 words depending on how many pictures and how many maps and all this.

[00:00:58]Um fitting the entire Civil Wars Navy campaigning into 40,000 words was like the ultimate struggle. I I I literally wrote chapters. So for each chapter I probably had to cut half or more of what I wrote for each then. Um, and it was the ultimate test of just like you like you do with your students with the journalism stuff, like editing down, editing down, editing down, saying the same thing but shorter, more succinct, but not losing the uh the oomph behind it. You know, you got to make sure you keep the story. You got to keep make sure you keep the the details while still somehow dropping all the details so that it all fits. It was it was it was a real challenge.

[00:01:44]>> Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, you've got like an organizational structure that helps.

[00:01:51]Um, tell us a little bit about how you decided to kind of attack the overall structure and maybe then we can talk about how that may or may not have helped you whittle that down.

[00:02:01]>> Yeah. Um, so there's been a lot of books of just the Navy and the Civil War, you know, lots of lots of much better historians than me like Jim McFersonson and Craig Simons and so on. They've all done this before. Um, so I wanted to tackle this one differently. Uh, you know, they they kind they every other book sort of follows this grand narrative that focuses on just the timeline of the Civil War. You know, it starts in 1861, ends in 1865. And mine does too, to a certain extent. Um, but it just kind of like jumps around.

[00:02:34]You know, there'll be a chapter on starting the blockade and then there'll be a chapter on continuing the blockade and then there'll be a chapter on mysteriously all of a sudden the Mississippi River and then another chapter on the blockade and then like three chapters later all of a sudden it pauses everything and goes to like Europe with commerce raiders and sometimes it just feels a little disjointed just because you know the the naval part of the civil war is all over the place. Um so like the organization for this one is just different. So we we decided we're going to divide up the book into four main sections. One section is going to cover each of the four principal naval theaters essentially. So you know people are familiar with like eastern western transmississippi. Well it's good for the army but like it's not the navy's war.

[00:03:18]Um and so we like this book is kind of the the real argument the thesis what's new here is let's divide the war at sea into four distinct theaters. Uh we've got the blockade as one. We've got latoral operations. That's operations on the coastline, capturing port cities, that sort of thing. Uh that's two. The Mississippi River Valley is three. And then the war on the open oceans, commerce, raiding, merchant ships, that sort of thing. The international side of it, that's four. And so, um, I start with the blockade because that's kind of where the war starts with Lincoln declaring the blockade right after Fort Sther. And then I shift to the the coastline because the blockading squadrons are doing the same job of assaulting ports and whatnot. Then I do the Mississippi Rivers and I chose Mississippi Rivers 3 so I could do Commerce Raiders last because the Civil War ends with the surrender of CSS Shannondoa. Um, and so having commerce raiders be last kind of just fit the narrative of the war's conclusion at the end. So that's kind of just how I organized it overall. So, if you've got four distinct theaters and 40,000 words, you could just do 10,000 words on each theater, right? And yeah, I'm oversimplifying, but >> yeah, I mean, for sure. Like, the rough draft was, let's divide it into four theaters, and each theater gets four chapters, and so each chapter gets a couple thousand words, give or take. You know, some ended up 22, 23, 24, 400, some ended up like 1,800. Give, you know, give or take roughly. But um that's kind of how we sort of agreed to divide it up a little bit on that and then just messed with it, finessed it a little bit, um adjusted things as need be. But um but even within those sections, it's not necessarily always a strict chronology. Like the Mississippi River section follows the river war in a more strict chronology, but like the blockade section has a section on how do how do you invent the blockade? How do you do it on a dayto-day? And then it finishes with a chapter on Confederates trying to break the blockade. So it's not necessarily a strict chapter for 1861, chapter for 1862, and so on for each element, you know. So, um, the organization's not 100% always following a narrative, even in those subsections, those a strict like timeline narrative, but I think that does a good job of, um, just showing the different aspects of how you tackle these things, different points of view, challenges, perspectives, and that, uh, hopefully came out pretty okay in the final draft of it. Well, what I liked about it is that, you know, as you kind of tackle each of these theaters as subjects, um, it really gives you the chance to bring out some themes that I think a lot of people overlook or they forget about because they're maybe interested or or paying attention to the naval actions, but like for instance, when you talk about the blockade, like one of the significant features of that is just maintaining it strictly enough that it qualifies under international law as a blockade. and and so like you know the enforcement of that becomes a real issue on an international level. Tell me a little bit about that particular component.

[00:06:30]>> Yeah. I mean so like uh before our civil war Europe a bunch of folks in Europe a bunch of countries got together in Europe and they signed this treaty the declaration of Paris. I like to make fun of it as another treaty of Paris because there's a you know there's a million of those in history. um where essentially Europeans said if you're going to have a blockade, you can't just announce it.

[00:06:52]You have to it has to be effective. It can't be a paper blockade with just a document saying so. Ships have to be posted. They have to have guards and like you have to actually physically stop ships. And if you can't, then it's under these international agreements.

[00:07:07]It's not a real blockade. And then anybody can go back and forth as they will. And you can't really punish anyone for it. And so a lot of what the United States does is they declare a blockade, but then you know the Confederates are trying to break it in one fashion or another cuz illegally if they can pierce the blockade and bring out some European diplomats, some consoles or ambassadors or whatnot and demonstrate it is missing, it's not here. Then all of a sudden they can write to their folks in Europe and say it's missing, it's not here. And then all of a sudden they can send whatever ships they want full of whatever supplies they want. And Lincoln has to redeclare the blockade of that area. And in in the 19th century, if you declared a blockade, you have to give like a 30-day window for ships to leave before it became effective. And so that's just, you know, the Confederates are just desperate to create this month of free travel along their coastline. Uh cuz you could bring all sorts of weapons all of a sudden, right? I mean like they the Confederates smuggled in 500,000 rifles during the war and that's just what got through the blockade. That's not including all the weapons not that that were caught uh by by US blockaders.

[00:08:14]And so like the international dimensions, these these legal dimensions, you know, usually people just think of, you know, guy on ship sits there through the night stares at a waiting for the enemy ship to show up.

[00:08:27]It's much more important than some dude losing out on sleep by watching the coastline. Um, and the factors are, you know, they're many they're manifested in many different ways than than just one guy not sleeping essentially.

[00:08:41]>> And, you know, as you talk about some of those international factors, I think that's another thing that actually really comes out in the book because, you know, your last section when you talk about the open oceans and the commerce raiders like that that demonstrates like this is a world war in some respects. um you know, not that the whole world is at war, but it spans the globe in a lot of ways.

[00:09:03]>> Yeah, I I really wanted to demonstrate that. That's that's one of the reason I wanted it to be a whole separate section so that I could really dive in and focus on the fact that there are are US and Confederate warships in the Mediterranean, prowling the South Atlantic, in the Indian Ocean, moving in Australia, in the Pacific, um doing different missions, you know, convoying ships, guarding merchant ships, attacking merchant ships. It's just a very big um scale. And uh you know a lot of people are familiar with the commerce raiders just because of Alabama and Shannondoa, but um seeing that scale expand um you know there's this crazy map in there where it's really difficult to read kind of on purpose showing all the arrows of all these different commerce raiders and I really wanted that to be in there cuz nobody's really tried to show that before. It's always one ship and it's route. And I wanted to overlay like three, four, five of these just to show how confusing it gets in the scale of where these ships actually went and how it's kind of everywhere.

[00:10:04]>> And when I think about, you know, kind of the war in the open seas, you know, I'm still thinking about the era of, you know, the War of 1812 and you've got ships to the line and big, you know, sailing ships blasting each other with cannons. That's not what things look like in the Civil War. Um, but what what is the open sea warfare like for the Navy?

[00:10:26]>> Yeah, it's it's largely one ship at a time going out and operating at a place where its captain thought best. You know, the Confederate commerce raiders, they largely have very overview guiding directions from their superiors, but the captains on those ships go wherever they want, honestly. Um, and so they're just prowling wherever they think best and they'll spend time in one area and then go a thousand miles away because they're like, "Oh, hunting's not good here anymore." US ships are starting to show up. I'm out of here. And all of a sudden, now instead of off the coast of Brazil, they're off the coast of South Africa or something like that.

[00:11:03]um the United States, they'll dispatch ships back and forth, but they'll largely keep them in regional areas.

[00:11:09]They'll send a few ships to prowl the Mediterranean or to North Europe and then a few others to go to South America or something like that. But those captains are largely also have their own discretion as to exactly where they are.

[00:11:22]And it's kind of interesting because, you know, everybody has the C charts, you know, like all these shipping lane charts that show where it's the best route to go from place to place. And you can see where all these lines overlap on. If you're going from Africa to Europe, go here. If you're going from Africa to America, go here. South America to India, go here. And you can see where the lines overlap. And well, everybody sees that. So that's where a lot of these raiders end up going is the spot where all these lines intersect cuz that's where the most ships are. So, um, sometimes it's expected where they end up, but a lot of times they're just moving from spot to spot hoping to strike it rich. And when they run into things, they get lucky.

[00:11:59]So, and this is maybe a question to back up a little bit, but it ties into this.

[00:12:04]Um, you know, as I think about these ships out in the open ocean, like the Confederacy didn't have a navy to start with because like they didn't exist as a country. So, they they basically have to create naval forces for blue water and brown water from scratch. How do they go about doing that?

[00:12:23]>> Yeah. So, like, yeah, the Civil War starts, the Confederacy has no ships.

[00:12:27]Absolutely. Um, and the United States has few ships, but they're at a very huge advantage all of a sudden just because they have some. Um, the Confederates are going to build some ships, especially ironclad ships at home. They're going to build some ironclads at home that are purpose-built from the keel up. Um, other times they'll take a ship and then cut the top of it off and build an ironclad on top.

[00:12:50]Um the most famous example that's obviously Virginia, the Marramac ship that sunk and that was scuttled and they raised it and built an ironclad on top of it. Um the Confederates acquire ships. There's a merchant ship, a paddle wheel steamboat in a harbor. When the war starts, they'll just buy it or take it, put a couple of cannons on it, sometimes literally field artillery because that's all you can fit on the deck. And uh now it's a ship patrolling the coastline or now it's a ship guarding the river. um they'll send some of those ships out from so so like the commerce raiders, some of those are homegrown ships, merchant ships in the Confederacy that they arm. Others are purpose-built in Europe. Uh the best purpose-built ships the Confederates had uh were these commerce raiders in Europe and they're largely styled off of British Royal Navy small corvette gunboat sort of things um just adapted for being at sea indefinitely cuz like they don't have ports. they they can't go to the Confederacy to get resupplies.

[00:13:50]Um, so there's different types of vessels that the Confederacy ends up acquiring or building there. They they have different functions. They have different goals, but the Confederacy uh they end up building or acquiring. Their navy has about 130 ships or so during the war. Uh, now that's kind of interesting because at its height, the Confederate Navy only has about 5,000 sailors. Um, there's about 10,000 people associated with the Confederate Navy as sailors or with other organizations affiliated with the Confederacy as far as naval forces, the Confederate Army's River Defense Fleet, State Navy, that sort of a thing. Um, about 10,000 people total, but the Confederate Navy at its heights about 5,500 people. So, small group >> making trying to make a bigger dent in the war.

[00:14:37]>> Yeah. And I know that the acquisition of some of those ships was a bone of contention for the United States and Great Britain because there's a little bit of subtrafuge going on there. Um where the, you know, where Great Britain is like maybe helping the Confederacy but trying to pretend that they're not.

[00:14:54]And how much of a problem is that for for both the, you know, Great Britain and America?

[00:14:59]>> It's a huge problem. I mean, so like step one, the Monroe Doctrine exists and European powers are saying during the war, well, let's ignore the Monroe Doctrine because well, who cares about it? The US is occupied. So like different countries are trying to do that in different ways. The British do that by trying to help the Confederacy sort of clandestinely.

[00:15:18]Um, the British declare neutrality during this war. A lot of countries do.

[00:15:22]And part of that neutrality was activating what the British have. It's a law called the Foreign Enlistment Act saying British people can't join Navy countries at war. They can't join their military and we can't outfit and build warships for those countries at war.

[00:15:36]That's the British point of view. Um the Confederates send people to England anyway and they start acquiring ships.

[00:15:43]They just don't put the cannons on them until they leave England and they say, "Well, that doesn't that means they're not warships yet, so we're not breaking the law." And you know, some of these British leaders are just looking the other way, obviously, trying to uh make money and keep their shipping industry going, you know, um because they're not getting cotton. So, you know, probably one in four people in Britain depend on the cotton trade from the south, the American South, just because of textile mills or the people who own the tenement apartments next to the textile mills or the people who run the grocery stores next to the textile mills. So, like for the British, you know, trying to keep their shipping industry alive is legit.

[00:16:22]So, when people show up and say, "I have a sock with a dollar sign on it. Can you get me a ship that looks like this gunboat, just don't arm it?" Some people say, "Yeah, we'll make that deal." And then that causes a lot of problems cuz the, you know, the US ends up suing the British after the war to get money back, to get reparations back for all this. In fact, the first offer was, "Okay, we'll call it even. Give us Canada." And then the British came back with a money figure instead. So like there's a whole lot of repercussions and ramifications in the long run for this.

[00:16:53]>> So you know and and this I think one of the neat things about this book is just you know you weave in all of these different kind of unexpected angles because the naval story just has so many repercussions that most of us don't think about. Um, was there anything that surprised you as you were doing your research that that uh maybe not necessarily that you discovered because you're pretty well-versed in naval history, but maybe as a thread that came out maybe you weren't expecting.

[00:17:20]>> Yeah. Um, I would say the coolest thread that I found was um about interervice cooperation. Today we call it joint military naval operations. Back then they called it combined operations. Um, I like to use interervice as sort of a hybrid between old 19th century terminology and today's terminology just because whatever. Um, but we we always kind of think of that as like Grant and David Dixon Porter worked together and so they did a good job and then like that's sort of the mention but honestly it's everywhere. Um, one of those theaters, the latoral coastline is the United States assaulting ports. New Orleans, Galveastston, Charleston, Savannah, Wilmington. I mean, none of those are solely naval operations. They all involve the army to one extent or another. That requires cooperation. The defenses for those places, you know, you attack Charleston, it's not just Bogard with some soldiers. There's a squadron of Confederate ironclads in Charleston defending the town as well. And so what I found was that, and this is kind of a no-brainer, where onseen military and naval officers worked together and cooperated, those guys success succeeded in their mission. So like in Charleston in 1863, Bogard succeeded in cooperating well with his naval counterpart, Captain John Tucker, whereas in the United States, Admiral John Dogrren was having like a nervous breakdown. His chiefs of staff were dying constantly. Um, and him and Quincy Gilmore were kind of arguing over who gets the credit over things.

[00:18:57]Charleston doesn't fall to the United States in 1863 and it stays a Confederate city for the rest of the war essentially um because of that cooperation. So, it's just one example of many, but basically what I found is that when when officers put egos aside, they were able to get stuff done. And when they couldn't, they couldn't. And it's a big deal because the only person that could tell both naval and military officers what to do is the president of each respective country. I mean, there's no department of defense. It's the secretary of war and the secretary of the navy in each cabinet, and they're equals in each cabinet. An admiral and a general do not have to talk to each other. a a general could go up to a naval enen and say I want you to do this and they could say no. So it required a lot of onseen commitment and well it's the civil war let's just say everybody's got an ego so that could get that gets in the way a lot >> and it's kind of interesting how that command structure evolved and you know probably beyond the uh the scope of this particular conversation but I mean that's a really old-fashioned look at how to wage war if your your army and your navy are completely detached from each other um and and that tradition has long long old roots into European, you know, backgrounds and it'll take a while before the United States kind of modernizes that to think about it in a more integrated way. But, uh, um, your book really kind of brings out some some really neat successes beyond the Grant and Porter, you know, Grant and Foot and then Grant and Porter examples. Um, who's a what do you think is a maybe the next most efficient team besides Grant and Porter?

[00:20:36]>> Oo.

[00:20:38]Ooh man, spot.

[00:20:40]>> That's a good one. Um, I don't know.

[00:20:43]I like how Porter worked really well at Wilmington. Not with Benjamin Butler, but like he literally was like, "Literally, send me any general besides Benjamin Butler and we'll capture Wilmington." And then they made it happen. Um, I like that. Uh, Farragut worked pretty well with in Mobile Bay Area cooperating to to silence like Fort Gaines and Morgan with the army. I mean, there was an actual plan there. It wasn't him just going, "I'll steam the ships in and we'll figure it out." Um, you know, there was a land siege of those forts at the same time. Like, they worked pretty well together, uh, in some respects. Uh, the Confederates, you know, Bogard and Tucker, like I mentioned, they worked really well together. Uh, they were able to put their differences aside. Um, but like, you know, there are other cases where people seemed to work well together, but it didn't. You know, like on the Mississippi River, you know, the Confederate naval guy Hollands on paper is working well with the Confederate army. They cooperate really well. But then every now and then you'll see like a guy dumps a train full of naval cannons on the side to put army cannons on it and then they just leave a receipt next to the cannons and like like it doesn't always work out the way that you think it does and that's uh turns problematic, you know. Um so there's lots of good examples out there and those are just a few of them. You mentioned the Mississippi River and you've had a lot of experience writing about it. So you're kind of an old hand at it at this point, but it strikes me that that's a a particularly challenging theater to write out because write about because you have Farragut kind of coming up from the south and you have Elllet and his forces kind of coming down from the north and you've got a lot of army navy particularly early in the war trying to figure out what the rules are and who's in charge and all. So tell me some of those um challenges about kind of working your way through the Mississippi River Valley as a theater to write about.

[00:22:32]>> Yeah. So most people when they write about the Mississippi River Valley, they focus it on a very US- ccentric US western gunboat flotilla centric thing and that and that's perfectly fine. like the books written about the US Navy on the Mississippi River about the western gunboat flotilla that turns into the Mississippi River Squadron and they essentially all just say oh yeah and Farragut was coming up at the same time and uh you know like it that's that's one point of view on this. I like to take a much broader point of view on it where it's you know a Pinsir movement happening and that's difficult because Farragut's assault on New Orleans is a postal assault not necessarily a river assault in some respects. Uh, so that's a little difficult because then you're like, where do you place it in the book if you're looking at different aspects, but also for the Confederacy, their point of view is it's just one river and it's the same guy in charge, that Hollands guy I was just talking about, and he's in charge of the whole thing.

[00:23:28]And he's using interior lines to move ships from one place to the other. And so keeping it from one perspective of that sort of losses the focus that it's an entire river valley campaign, not just ships going down the river like like you mentioned, that can get a little bit lost in the in the message.

[00:23:46]And uh I just wanted to try to make sure that this wasn't lost in the message.

[00:23:51]Now, that can get tough because that means that you're jumping around a little bit from like, you know, talk about up river, then talk about down river, then talk about up river, and then talk about how, oh, all of a sudden they're meeting in the middle. Um, and that just takes a little bit of like uh careful writing to make sure that you're not having readers lose focus on, oh, where am I now? Where am I now? What's going on? Because it can easily be lost in the shuffle, especially when you've only got, you know, a thousand words to tell that story of how they meet in the middle of Vixsburg in in 1862 to try to bombard the place out and then fail. So, that like it gets tough. And you know there's also that little complication that you've got, you know, u um iron clads that are getting developed and you've got steam power, you've got um Farragut still got some sail power as well as some some um screw propellers and you know and he's got ships made for the open ocean that are getting beaten up by flatsom coming down the river. So, like there's just there's so much more to that theater than I think people realize um that make it a fascinating place to spend some time.

[00:24:56]>> Yeah, it's it's pretty interesting stuff and it brings up a good point of I try to hide things in the book about the development of naval technology about this that question of you know like sailboats versus steamboats versus guns versus ramming attacks versus ironclads versus wooden vessels. what types are being developed where and I kind of hide it in there of the fact that like there are actual procurement programs for the United States. They have specific people in charge. I I throw their pictures in the book just to like as an excuse to add captions describing those scenes of this guy is in charge of ironclad procurement. This person is in charge of the procuring wooden ships. This person's in charge of building wooden ships from the keel up. And so like uh we think of the Confederates as let's get any ship we can. The United States did the same thing. They were purchasing tugboats, fishing boats, you know, river boats. They were purchasing whatever they could get as long as they thought it could do a mission. Um, so it's not the US showed up with the top tier of only the best gunboats that existed.

[00:25:58]Like those ironclads on the Mississippi River, a lot of them were built from the keel up. Other ones were just snag boats that they put iron on top of and they just were like, "Let's see if that works this year." So, uh, it's it's hit and miss, but I mean that's that's what happens when you it it reminds me a lot of World War I. You know, you're developing these tanks. They all look different. They all are weird. Some of them have a lot of guns. Some of them have turrets, some don't. Like, they're just trying to figure it out um on the fly. And that brings for a lot of different looking vessels that have a lot of different missions. And I think that's kind of fascinating.

[00:26:31]>> Yeah. Uh well, and that kind of I guess makes me think of Elllet and his his decision to try to develop these ram the ram fleet and nobody wants anything to do with it at first and Simon Cameron's like oh wait the army can maybe you know so like tell me about like some of those interesting dynamics as you know at the start of the war they're still trying to figure it out and that's not just inventing technology but figuring out command structures figuring out logistic structures figuring out uh you know army navy relations Um it's a pretty muddy, messy time.

[00:27:05]>> It It really is. Um for both sides, like I had mentioned, the top person is the president. And so like who really is in charge? Eh, it does. It's the president. That's it. But like you like you brought up like the Mississippi River is a great example. Uh you know, the United States is building gunboats on the upper Mississippi and St. Louis and so on.

[00:27:28]They're manned by naval officers, but they answer to the army, at least until late 1862. And that's just because the Navy didn't want to build these ships and operate them. They thought it was like, "Oh, the Ohio, that's that's the army. Like, you guys are in charge.

[00:27:44]We'll send a couple of guys to advise you." You know, um the Confederates have their own similar problems. Um, in 1862 in at New Orleans, the army just seizes a bunch of steamboats and then puts cannons on them and and and and reinforces the bows with iron to to make them rams. And so that's how at Memphis you end up having ram ship versus ram ship. And what's ironic is that the ram ships on both sides are run by the armies of both sides instead of the navies while navy ships are kind of like watching the battle essentially. Um, it gets real confusing. One of the appendixes in the book I called it naval organizations and it's sort of it's twofold. One is how are the Navy departments organized? You know the Bureau of Steam Engineering, the Bureau of Ordinance and so on. But it's also it's not a Navy thing. It's a naval thing cuz it's not just the Confederate and US Navy. The the armies both have ships operating. There are privateeers.

[00:28:44]There's the river defense fleet, the US ram fleet, the western gunboat flotillaa, you've got uh, you know, civilian ships, you've got the Texas maritime department, you've got state navies in Virginia, Louisiana, and so on. It's real confusing. And uh, and it a lot of people just lump it all as Confederate Navy, US Navy, but I think that loses the picture of, well, if you're in the Louisiana Navy, is that Confederate naval officer in charge of you? Do you even have to listen to him?

[00:29:13]I mean, the the enem is 500 yards that way, but like, are you going to start a fight with that guy instead? And sometimes that happens.

[00:29:21]And so, that just adds to the complexity of the the stupidity of realizing that like a chain of command is really important. And for both sides, sometimes that doesn't exist in a very clear way until later in the war.

[00:29:35]>> So, I mean, it sounds like there's so much information in this book. Um, how do you keep the book from being just a big long Wikipedia entry?

[00:29:45]>> It it was it it's hard. Um, I tried to have a whole lot of small stories and I tried to use examples that followed specific people. Um, so for for example on the coastline, I'll keep follow when we talk about coastal assaults, I'll keep following the same couple of naval officers who are complaining about stuff not getting done in 1861. And then, you know, later on, a couple chapters later, the same guy is writing a letter about how his friend got shot at Wilmington in the Fort Fisher assault and how he got shot as well. And so I'm trying to follow the same people sometimes or I'll start a chapter with like anecdotes that have specific stories that are worth telling to provide an example of what does the blockade look like or or things like that. So it's a lot of trying to throw in, you know, what we call the the cool stories, right? These little anecdotes, these vignettes of different sailors doing different missions. And then in between telling those stories, I zoom way out and tell this big macro picture, this this overall thing I've got. I mean, there's lots of statistics in the book about the blockade and commerce raiders cuz it's kind of hard to not talk about commerce raiders without talking about how many ships they captured um as a big picture scale.

[00:31:02]And so there's a whole lot of that, but it's it's a constant zoom out, zoom in, zoom out, zoom in of uh getting the big picture so that you understand what the war was and then zooming in for those vignettes to see specific things. And that's tough because I mean like I'll be honest, the Battle of Hampton Roads has many books. It gets like two paragraphs in this thing >> because there's so much more story to tell than just the same story that's been told over and over again. Well, and you know, that's the nice thing about the suggested reading list in the back is like, well, if you want more on the Battle of Hampton Roads, go read Dwight's book and here are some other, you know, that kind of thing, too. Um, so I think that, you know, the book nicely situates that incident, which most people have probably heard of into that larger macro story so that we can kind of see where does that belong in the the development and the overall arch arching story of those those types of assaults. I think the book does a really nice job of that. I think it's a a really effective zoom in zoom out zoom in zoom out uh uh approach that you took.

[00:32:05]>> Well well if you say say I'll take that as a as a compliment. I mean you read it early during all the proofing and drafting and everything so if you weren't confused by it that's a good sign.

[00:32:15]>> No, in fact I was amazed by it honestly because uh and and I say this as a compliment. you crammed a lot of information into that book and uh and I I specifically say that's a compliment because it's, you know, I don't want people to think like, oh well, it's just going to be too much stuff. I want, you know, super accessible, super reader reader friendly, you know, easy to follow along. There's just a lot going on in a very effective way there. Um, I mentioned our our late colleague Dwight Hughes and this book comes from a kernel of an idea that he had first come up with. you want to tell us a little bit about the origins of the book and where it came from?

[00:32:51]>> Yeah, absolutely. So, um, when I first became a member of Emerging Civil War, one of the first sort of events that I went to was the ECW member retreat. We we did it up in Gettysburg that year.

[00:33:02]And I had been emailing different people, but this was my first chance to like meet people in person. And uh, obviously one of the first people I wanted to talk to was Dwight because we're both Navy guys and so we've got something in common. and we had been emailing back and forth about other projects and stuff. I got to the retreat, we were talking about other things. We were having little info sessions about mapmaking and, you know, other stuff. And um, you know, Dwight pulled me aside and he's like, "Hey, we need Navy books in the Emerging Civil War series cuz there aren't any." And he's like, "I'm working on a Hampton Roads one now, the one that he ended up creating." He's like, "But we need more than that." and me and him came up with a list of like, you know, 25 Navy books that could be in the Emerging Civil War series for some reason or another. Um, you know, knowing full well that most of these would never see the light of day cuz they're too obscure or like whatever. And then, um, we kind of started discussing like, well, but nobody knows what anything about the Navy is, so we need some sort of like primer on just the war itself from a naval point of view. And um that night I just wrote down like I I I typed up a draft like summary of that uh sent it to him. We played with it for a little while. Um eventually sent it to you and uh you and Ted were like this sounds good cuz I don't even know what any of this is, you know. Um and then we started we started writing. We were going to co-author the book together. We we divided up into different sections where we would each take half of those chapters um for different elements and focus on different things. like he was going to focus on the coastline while I was going to focus on the Mississippi River obviously um and so on and um you know over the course of the writing of the book Dwight got sick and uh his health started failing and I had written a bunch of chapters and he had written basically just like what was going to be the introduction to the book. Um and uh he he kind of we were talking and he made the decision like I need to step back from this project. I need to focus on my health and I, you know, that's perfectly fine. And uh, you know, shortly thereafter is when he passed away. And so, like, in part, this book is like me paying homage to Dwight for his effort in trying to help me organize this thing and take the lead on the project. I'm very honored that like before he passed away, I I reached out to him and that introduction that he wrote, I mean, that's the book's forward. So, I wanted to make sure that we had his name on the cover of the book. I wanted to make sure his voice was still in it because I mean it was Dwight's idea to divide it into those four naval theaters. You'll notice at the beginning of the podcast I kept saying we we we and I'm talking about him. Uh you know saying what if we divid divided into these naval theaters then we hashed out what that looks like together. Uh so it's very much a uh it started out as a tag team effort and I had to write most of the pros for it but um I wanted to make sure that I did him justice. So, you know, his picture is inside the acknowledgement section of the book. His name's on the cover of the book as the writer of the forward. So, I wanted to make sure we did him justice for that.

[00:36:08]>> Yeah. Yeah. It was one of those things that felt really important to me, too, that we kind of saw through his original vision for and he was very excited. He wanted like a book on each of the different theaters uh once upon a time.

[00:36:20]And I was like, I'm not sure that people would, you know, there's a market for that yet. I think we have to start big and then we'll kind of test the water, so to speak. But uh and and you know you you we've alluded a couple times to the writing you've done in the Mississippi Valley and and you know even a second ago you said I wrote about the Mississippi Valley of course. Um let remind folks like what have you written about the the Civil War Navy? Because you've got a great body of work so far and you're continuing to work. I want to give a little plug to that.

[00:36:47]>> Yeah, sure. Um so my first book is a um it's a it's a it's called Fought Like Devils. It came out way back in 2014, you know, back when I was a kid. Um, and it's just a history of this Confederate warship named McRay that was on the Mississippi River. It actually started out as like a research project when I was in undergrad. And then I just kept adding and adding and adding to it. Um, and then that book kind of inspired me to write my second one, which was defending the arteries rebellion, which is about the Confederate POV of the Mississippi River Valley campaigning because I had alluded before, you know, this very US- ccentric point of view that most people take. So, I wanted to offer the Confederate point of view just to offer that whole riverwide both directions at the same time >> perspective on things. And that was pretty well received by a lot of people.

[00:37:35]Um, >> a great book. Great book.

[00:37:37]>> I think so, too. I think everybody should think so, too.

[00:37:40]>> Um, >> pick it up and read it for yourself.

[00:37:43]>> Why not? And then, and then my my most recent book besides this one was uh Treasure and Empire in the Civil War, which I mean, we've done a podcast about that one before. Uh, that one's about the um the international aspects, the shipping of gold from California, how do you get it to New York, the Confederates trying to intercept that? Um, basically, how does maritime wealth impact the naval side of the war and the economic side of the war uh together? And that one, that's like my favorite one just because it's like every time somebody hears about it, they're like, I didn't even think about thinking about that sort of an idea, you know? Like to me that's the one that's my most uh prominent contribution to the literature so to speak and like as an academic you know we like does our stuff contribute to the literature in some way and that one I think has the biggest one the biggest oomph factor for that. Yeah. And it to me what I really liked about that book was it was it illuminated a whole aspect of the war I hadn't even thought about. You know, it ties in economic history and you know, naval history and military, you know, just is like, you know, you uh you brought light to to something that needed to have some uh some prominence to it. So, I really appreciated that book a lot. So, it's they're like your kids, aren't they? The most recent ones like, "Oh, I really like this one the best. I really like, you know."

[00:38:59]>> Oh, yeah. And but you can't have favorites because they're your kids.

[00:39:03]>> I mean, it's how it's how it goes, you know. And you know, I've got a folder on my desktop that's got like, you know, 10 more book projects that I'm just like, I got to get to these at some point. I got to get to these at some point. So, um, and hopefully >> from this one, you've got another one that that is imminent. Um, it'll be out this season. We'll podcast about that one, but give us a little preview.

[00:39:21]>> Yeah. So, um, I literally just sent in the final proofs back yesterday. Uh, so that it'll be kind of on the way. But, uh, that one's titled Ironclad Ambush.

[00:39:31]Confederates strike Lincoln's Mississippi River blockade at the Head of Passes, October 12th, 1861. So, it's about the first attempts by the Confederacy to break the US blockade at the mouth of the Mississippi River at this place called the Head of Passes.

[00:39:46]Um, and it's about how the United States, it's it's essentially a look at twofold. One, the Confederates try to break this blockade, and two, the United States is trying to establish the blockade. So, it goes really into depth on Okay, they declared a blockade. How do you make it? How do you make that happen? And we're using the Mississippi River Valley in the mouth of the river as the example. And then the Confederates, how do they try to break it? And it involves, you know, ramming attacks, ironclad ships, surprise attacks, fire rafts, and drunk people everywhere, and miscommunication everywhere. And uh, you know, it's just one of these little battles that no one's ever heard of that honestly, if you look at it, it's got a lot of big effects. And so I just wanted to give it some due justice because like if you look at other books, other people mention it for like three pages, four pages. It's just an anecdote. So I was like, let me see if I could pull 200 pages on this thing. And and I pulled that off somehow.

[00:40:37]>> Yeah. Very good. It sounds like one of my uh my college fraternity camping trips actually. Uh you know, with fire rafts and drunk people. Uh >> Oh, for real. It's It was actually a lot of fun to write just because you know, so little has been written about it that and everybody kind of gets the story wrong. So, like I I just had a blast kind of dissecting it. That was a true detective story in a lot of ways.

[00:40:58]>> And as I said, we'll podcast about that coming up uh later this summer as we turn our attention back to this great contest of float. Um now that you've had the chance to kind of sit with the book a little bit, um anything kind of coming out to you now that you're like, you know, I'm glad I wrote this for this reason or um you know, I'm glad I discovered this for this reason.

[00:41:20]>> Yeah. So, um, first off, it's just step one is kudos to, you know, the Savis Batty team for their organization on it, the layout of it. I mean, like, it just looks really good. Um, and like, you know, this I tried to cram so many pictures into this thing. Um, there's like 17 maps in this book somehow. I don't know how that even was possible.

[00:41:44]>> Thanks to Alexander. Great. Great.

[00:41:46]>> Right. No, exactly. Yeah. Kudos to him for all the work he does to help all of us. Um, and there's like 170 pictures in this thing. And I remember when I gave you the original documents, I think I had like double that in in images. And you were like, there's no way we're going to fit all this in. I was like, I just want you to have options.

[00:42:07]And uh, like we had to cut and then we had to cut and then we had to cut. But honestly, the imagery that stayed, the maps that stayed um, and we I ended up cutting maps out of it, too, just for space, too. Uh it really does a good job. I mean every single page basically has some sort of imagery on it and honestly I think that adds a lot of value. Uh mainly because the style of the book is that you know all the captions for those pictures tell side stories and so I had a lot of you know to get those small vignettes. You know, I'll have a picture of a sailor and his wife, and the caption doesn't just say the name of the sailor and his wife.

[00:42:42]It'll say, "And that guy helped capture four blockade runners off the Texas coast and got a promotion from it." And so, he helped the Confederacy not get 10,000 rifles. You know, or it'll say something along those lines. and it helps really add value to these small stories that um you know the visuals are great to help add visuals to what you're reading, but like I wanted those captions to have more value added and hopefully that turned out pretty well.

[00:43:09]At least I think it did. So the overall impression of it just kind of blew me away. And then you know the the why am I really glad I that it ended up like it did? Hopefully this can get more people thinking Navy. And I'm not I'm not trying to convert everybody who loves Gettysburg into I should study the Navy all of a sudden. Um but like sailors think differently than soldiers even today. And it's just that's how it goes.

[00:43:35]It's the nature of the work. Sailors are always on call whereas soldiers in some fort, you know, in upstate New York, they're not ready for Confederates to attack at any moment. But sailors on the blockade have to be ready 24/7 for that.

[00:43:49]that for something to happen at any moment. So, um the thought process behind how sailors operate and that's kind of why it's divided into those four principal theaters is, you know, even at the macro scale, the grand scale, sailors organized the war much differently than soldiers did. And hopefully this can shed some light on the fact that it's not just east west trans Mississippi, east west trans Mississippi. There's a lot more to this conflict than that. And these theaters fit into those army theaters a lot obviously but uh you know it's a bigger story to tell and hopefully this can help people who weren't thinking about that think about that better. I have to admit when you talk about like sailors always being on call and uh uh and in the back of my head is always this thought like and if things go wrong I could get eaten by a shark you know because like you'll end up in the drink and you know that's just it's a lot different you know a very inhospitable environment to find yourself wounded in or lost in or something like that whereas you know if you're lost in the woods you know it's not quite so so dire.

[00:44:56]That's true. I mean, I've written about this for the for the blog before about like naval um surgeons, but like let's an easy example is if you're in the army and there's an emergency and you're in camp, you can call in a bunch of surgeons from different regiments to come help out if need be. If you're on a ship, there's one there's one doctor and that might be the only ship for a 100 miles >> and the operating table might be going like this, >> right? So, like, you know, like it just adds even more to the ridiculousness. I mean, sailors had a much safer war.

[00:45:30]Proportionally, they died less.

[00:45:31]Proportionally, they were less sick.

[00:45:34]Proportionally, it was a safer job to do for both sides. Um, but it was a completely different war for them. You know, it's it's a completely different experience and they face their own trials that are much different than the trials that soldiers face dayto-day. And I'm not trying to say one is worse than the other, but uh they're very different trials that to endure. And um hopefully this helps people understand that those trials are different.

[00:46:00]>> Yeah. Yeah. That's the re one of the reasons to buy the book. Any final thoughts for us?

[00:46:05]>> Uh buy the book.

[00:46:07]No, I mean I appreciate that Emerging Civil War and I appreciate that uh Ted Savis they took a chance on me cramming all this information together because I mean like you said it is packed and it's really easy that it could have turned into something that's just a dull Wikipedia page essentially. Um, and I'm glad that you think and hopefully readers will think that it's much more than that and that it adds a little bit of value not just to the ECW book series, but to their understanding of the war overall.

[00:46:37]>> Yeah, it is packed and yet remains an overview. So, just imagine if you really got into pretty >> I mean like I made the bibliography and the citations and everything that are on the the website. There's like 500 citations that I threw on in there. And the bibliography for this book is just as long as my regular books that are twice as long, >> you know, it's just as many pages. So, um, like the scholarship is hidden. It's in there. And if people really want to see it, go on to the ECW website. You can find it all. It's it's there. Um, but like cramming it all in, that's that was something. And and I guess I'm proud of myself for being able to do it.

[00:47:18]>> You should be. I was about to say you covered a lot of ground, but it's the Navy, so there's probably not much ground at all, is there? So, >> Neil, thanks so much time. Thanks for spending some time with us to tell you about your new book, This Great Contest of Float. Congratulations.

[00:47:31]>> Thank you. Appreciate it.

[00:47:32]>> I'm Chris Macowski for the Emerging Civil War podcast. We'll see you online and on the battlefield.